My Uncle Jack passed away recently and left his entire estate to my mom, Amber. Mom dealt with most of his possessions in the normal way. Any money Jack left her mom used to pay bills and put the rest in savings. After that, she recruited me to help her sift through all of Uncle Jack's belongings.
We sorted all of his old stuff into piles. One pile for a garage sale we would have later in the week. One pile for things we thought other family members could use, and one pile for trash.
After about 15 minutes of this, I discovered something odd. In Jack's master bedroom was a closet packed to the gills with puzzles. Everything from the super simple 100 piece puzzles all the way to 4000+ bigger puzzles. I immediately ran and grabbed my mom to show her. She was as shocked as I was. We talked it over and at first, we decided to add them to the garage sale pile. I finished the master bedroom when I heard mom walk in the room.
"Hey Tom, we've been looking for something to do together on weekends. What do you think about doing some of these puzzles your Uncle left us?" She said. Puzzles didn't seem like a very exciting proposition. I thought for a while and decided I didn't really have any good reason not to. Plus it would be nice to spend more time with mom.
"Sure, that sounds like fun mom," I said as we left to continue sorting the rest of the house.
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The garage sale had come and gone and we even sold Uncle Jack's house. Just like we had decided we started completing Jack's puzzles on weekends. Now the puzzles took up a whole closet in our house and we didn't have as much room as Jack did. Mom and I agreed to complete each puzzle then discard the boring or damaged puzzles. Hopefully, we could clear up some closet space this way.
We started with the easy ones 100, 500, 1000 piece puzzles. After a while, we realized we both really enjoyed finishing these puzzles together. It was a nice relaxed way to finish out the weekend. Plus I was starting to bond with my mom again. We hadn't been this close since I was a kid.
It seemed like no time at all and we had done most of the puzzles in the closet. The only ones that were left were extremely difficult or had a ton of pieces. There were also 5 or 6 boxes that had no label and had been in the bottom corner of Jack's old closet.
"I don't know if I wanna tackle the big puzzles just yet mom. What about one of these blank ones?" I said while holding one of the unmarked boxes. I shook the box to prove it wasn't empty.
"Oh, A puzzle without the picture that sounds like even more or a challenge." Mom laughed and grabbed the box out of my hands.
Mom and I sat on the three-seater couch in the middle of the living room. We sat at either end leaving a seat in-between us. Mom took the top off the box and turned the box upside down on the large table in front of us.
For being in her late 40's mom still looked good. She had long brown hair that went down past her shoulders. This matched her brown eyes and thin-framed glasses perfectly. Mom's curves were hidden mostly by her clothes. She wore a grey top with a long blue skirt. She had kicked off her heels as soon as she got home so her naked feet were sticking out under the table.
Mom was all dressed up because she had to help with a charity event earlier. I, on the other hand, had the whole day off and was doing my laundry. Everything was in the wash except for the t-shirt and shorts I was wearing. Normally I had a pair of underwear on wash day too, but I had messed up and washed all my boxers.
At 22, I had brown hair like my mom. My hair was way shorter however and didn't even go past my ears. My t-shirt was pretty basic but, my shorts were extremely small. So most of my legs were exposed.
Once the pieces were all spread out on the table mom and I got to work. After flipping enough of them over it was clear that the primary colors were green, peach and blue. We started with the edges as best we could and it was clear that the blue pieces were forming the sky in the background. It was still hard to tell what the center of the puzzle would be. The green sections were clearly the grass at the bottom of the image. It was hard to tell what all the peach colors went to. The images were only starting to take shape when mom went to the kitchen.
"I'm going to get a drink you want anything?" Mom opened the fridge while talking.
"Yeah, I'll have whatever you're having," I said sifting through pieces. Mom promptly returned with 4 beers in one hand. In the other hand, she had paper towels which we used for coasters.
"Thanks," I said as I took 2 from her and set them down. We got straight back to work. Sipping on the beers really took the edge of the extremely hot day. Mom snapped a few more pieces into place. This had cleared up the image a little and it was clearly a leg of some kind.
"Maybe it's an animal?" I said to mom while I put another piece in the middle. "It looks familiar I just can't place it yet." I looked down and realized that I had the next correct bit in my hand. Excitedly I added the odd-shaped piece in my hand to the leg part. Now it was clear that this was a young ladies leg.
"Oh, Maybe this is like a swimsuit puzzle." Mom said with a little shock in her voice.
As we continued I noticed that there were a lot of legs. I thought it was at least 6. Just then mom spoke up
"I think it's a portrait of your uncle with his girlfriend?" She said as she completed a male face that looked an awful lot like Jack.
"No, that doesn't make sense, there are too many legs," I said. Mom took another sip of beer and shrugged her shoulders.
"It will make sense once we finish more of it." She said while clicking another piece into place. After I solved a few more segments I picked up an odd-looking one. I noticed it looked peach like the others but with a dark circle in the middle. Why did that look so familiar to me? I stood there just staring at the piece. Suddenly I heard my mom gasp.
Off to the side of the main puzzle frame, Mom had been assembling two or three pieces separately. She had her hand over her mouth in shock. The section she had assembled looked an awful lot like a penis. That's when it hit me the piece I had was a nipple. Mom could see me looking at the ones she had assembled, she had forgotten to hide it. So I showed her the piece I had in my hand.
"Mom, I think Uncle Jack made some custom puzzles." She almost laughed as she saw the piece in my hand. Out of embarrassment, I started to put the loose pieces back in the box quickly.
"Wait, what are you doing." She said while grabbing a piece out of my hand. She threw it back into the pile.
"Oh, I just thought it's kind of weird to finish an adult-themed puzzle with my mom," I said while picking up another piece. I could see a look of confliction in my mom's face. Then after a few moments, she grabbed the three pieces that revealed the penis and connected it to the main puzzle.
"I know it's weird honey, but we haven't failed to finish one of these yet. I'm too stubborn to let Jack's weird puzzle beat me. Let's just finish it quick and we can discard it after" She said while looking for more edge pieces. I didn't know what to do, this was too weird. Like my mom, I had a bit of a stubborn streak too. After a few moments of my own contemplation, I got up from my seat and headed to the fridge.
"This is to weird to do sober," I said. "You want another beer? I'm gonna get another for my self either way." Mom just nodded.